The black, cylindrical Echo is apparently a wireless speaker that connects to the Internet—specifically, the intimidatingly large part of the Internet that comprises Amazon’s Web Services. The Echo can play music from smart phones, tablets and computers via Bluetooth. It can also stream from Amazon Music and third-party sources such as TuneIn and iHeartRadio. But the Echo also has a capability found on no other wireless speaker: It is equipped with an array of seven microphones so that it can listen to, and attempt to answer, any question you ask it.

The Echo’s voice recognition is impressive and likely to get even better over time. Since every bit of the voice analysis aside from the wake word is done on Amazon’s servers, the company can continue to refine its results as more people use the technology. In my opinion, Echo’s response time was faster than that of Siri and Google Now.